Because of the unpleasant taste of some foods such as vegetables like broccoli or brussel sprouts many people, especially children, do not or will not eat them. However, nutrition may be sacrificed as a result. Broccoli is part of the Brassica family, along with its odd-tasting relatives such as brussel sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower. This family of vegetable is known to have a bitter taste and smell. Although bitterness can sometimes be desirable—such as in the taste of coffee or chocolate—more often bitter taste causes rejection that can interfere with food selection, nutrition and therapeutic compliance. This is especially true for children.
But it seems that the more bitter the food tastes, the better it is for you. Nutrition scientists know that broccoli, and all of its bitter-tasting mates, are rich in minerals, fibre and various vitamins. Spinach is another bitter-tasting vegetable that is high in nutrients like calcium, magnesium and zinc.
Added flavorings alone or in combination with sweetening agents have been employed to improve taste and palatability in masking pharmaceuticals. Flavorings and sweetening agents, however, are not satisfactorily effective against bitter tasting substances.
Various delivery vehicles for taste masking or taste-modifying the delivery of pharmaceuticals or nutritional supplements have been employed, such as flavored liquid suspensions, coatings on pharmaceutical tablets and/or capsules, and even dissolvable films. However, in each of these situations, the substance to be masked is present at the time of delivery of the taste masking or modifying substance and is primarily one of the ingredients in the composition itself. For example, dissolvable films have been used to deliver pharmaceutical actives to children and to deliver breath-freshening agents such as menthol. In both instances, the substance to be taste-masked was either present in the formulation itself or was already present, which makes developing taste masking formulations easier and/or more predictable.